Good and Bad PR: Good Gardeners’ World, good grief Kanye!

2nd May 2018 3 minute read

Good PR

I’m doing a bit of a research project this week at work which sees me reading nine of the national newspapers every day (all will be revealed soon).

This has meant that over the last few days I’ve been absorbing a lot of news (more than usual) and one story that I noticed made it into every paper on one particular day was some research by the BBC’s Gardeners’ World Magazine.

It’s typically not very easy for magazines or publications to generate media coverage for themselves in other titles, but (of all things) it was a story about hedgehogs that did the trick for the gardening mag.

Apparently, Gardeners’ World Magazine does an annual survey, which this year revealed that hedgehog numbers have fallen for a second year and almost six in every 10 people said they didn’t see one of the spikey little fellas in 2017.

So, whilst it’s gloomy news for hedgehogs, I have to take my hat off to BBC Gardeners’ World magazine for a story that literally made its way just about everywhere this week.

Bad PR

Oh Kanye. When will you stop doing things that make people shake their heads in disbelief?

The controversial husband of Kim Kardashian West was making headlines again this week for all the wrong reasons. In an interview with celebrity news site TMZ (on camera, might I add), Kanye said “When you hear about slavery for 400 years ... for 400 years? That sounds like a choice… you were there for 400 years and it's all of y'all. It's like we're mentally imprisoned."

Ummm, nah. He then went on to declare his love for Trump once more; just days after posting an image of himself wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat with two (I’m guessing) pro-Trump blokes and the caption “we got love”.

The rapper really isn’t doing himself any favours from a personal PR point of view. In fact, he’s probably losing fans by the minute.

One of the TMZ employees who overheard what was going on was quick to confront Kanye about his slavery comments. You can watch the video here (spoiler alert: it’s awkward as hell)…

There’s another video doing the rounds of Kanye talking to fellow rap artist T.I. during a recording session for his upcoming track Ye vs the People which is less of a song and more of a debate between the two stars about right and wrong. In this video, he tries to explain his reasons for wearing the Trump supporter hat, saying that it “forces a revolution” and that actually, he doesn’t agree with half the stuff Trump does.

Whatever the case, it’s been bad news story after bad news story for Kanye and even after trying to explain his slavery comments on Twitter, he’s still in a lot of people’s bad books. Loads of people are feeling let down by him, including his friend Will.i.am who said the comments “broke his heart”.

The news has spread fast, marking another notch out of his already damaged reputation.